Plant Size and Containers
The plants need to have enough room in the pots to have 10 or more lateral roots. The pots have to be big enough to keep the root system alive without killing the microorganisms around the roots.
Plants in containers smaller than a quart are not viable. We have experimented over the years and found the smallest container we can ship you a viable product in is a gallon. We used 180-200 cc. Containers(8 oz.) proved to be stable for us, and I used these sizes in installations for years, but customers and employees that did not have a perfectly green thumb killed large numbers. Sometimes this green thumb did not make much sense! I could plant a row of the small pots with one of our employees following and planting the second row only to have 75 out of 80 of his die and 1 out of 80 of mine die. Going to gallons made those numbers both 0 out of 80. Bareroot is not possible on most of our plants,as they are way too root sensitive. If your site does not have the right fungal and bacterial support, our plants have that support.( We target each plant community. This fungal support is one of the reasons digging up plants from the wild does not work well.) Our climate is unforgiving, and 'problematic' these are real numbers for each container.
Peat pots, (50% kill) and a lot of slime.
Solid styrene(which is nothing but non-aerated styrofoam)(80% kill),
Plastic tubes(75% kill), what didn't die looked awful
Tree cells, no roots in container middle, non-mycorrhizal and very poor looking plants,(50%)
Deep pots, same a tree cells.
Paper (100% kill), nothing but a big slimy mess.
Styro packs, rot not root
By kill, we mean from propagation through establishment in the ground with no pesticides. Davis and Young had similar results. The problem is always the same, the pots just do not have enough aeration. We are now back to gallons, please recycle them. We use mostly recycled pots in the nursery, saved from the local dumps. Pots bigger than gallons are not as good either, because the roots do not establish very well. Five gallon or bigger plants cannot be used on sites without regular water (revegetation sites). Their success rate is very poor unless watered. They attach very poorly to the mycorrhizal grid.
Actual costs become apparent only if you are tracking costs on a native planting in the interior. Coastal customers, designers or one time installers may never have a clue. Guarantee a planting for a year in the interior, you will notice the difference. This table is for comparison only. EVERY site is different, and costs will vary. Contractors will not make money at these numbers, so if the project doesn't include numbers above these, it will probably not work.
I like to include more than 4000 plants per acre.....